ABSTRACT
By the early 1990s, hip-hop had finally broken the language barrier. Though young Puerto Ricans from the South Bronx and El Barrio have been involved in breakdancing, graffiti writing, and rap music since the beginnings of hip-hop back in the 1970s, it was only belatedly that the Spanish language and Latin musical styles came into their own as integral features of the rap vocabulary. By the mid-nineties, acts like Mellow Man Ace, Kid Frost, Gerardo, and El General became household words among pop music fans nationwide and internationally, as young audiences of all nationalities came to delight in the catchy Spanglish inflections and the guaguancó and merengue rhythms lacing the familiar rap formats. Mellow Man Ace’s “Mentirosa” was the first Latino rap record to go gold in the summer of 1990; Kid Frost’s debut album Hispanic Causing Panic instantly became the rap anthem of La Raza in the same year; Gerardo as “Rico Suave” has his place as the inevitable Latin lover sex symbol; and El General has established the immense popularity of Spanish-language reggae-rap in the Caribbean and Latin America.
